Kill Henry Sugar

OK – I’m not a good enough writer to explain how great Kill Henry Sugar is.  They played at Hungry Monk Music on April 5th.  Dean and Erik were in town to back up the queen of folk – Joan Baez.  Somehow they found Hungry Monk Music through New Music Collective and Bill Carson.  They gave a concert/workshop where they played drum set and resonator guitar and sang.  They also explained things about folk music, themselves and why they are called Kill Henry Sugar.  Actually, they didn’t really explain any of that, but whatever they said was really entertaining and interesting.  They even took political questions from the audience.

Dean and Erik enjoy history and many of their songs tell historical tails from New York and elsewhere.  They also were very entertained by my lute and so I took lute requests after the show.  I’m not going to describe their music because I just want everyone who reads this to listen to them.  Buy their newest CD and make a Kill Henry Sugar radio station on Pandora.com 

It was fun to trace family history with Erik.  Guitar players are all part of a musical family so the first thing we do is to trace how we are connected.  It only took a few min. to discern that Erik studied with Fred Hand in NY and John Holenko bought his guitar many many years ago from Fred.  This makes Erik and John guitar cousins of a kind and I’m sure it bores the hell out of everyone else, but it is endlessly fascinating to guitar pickers.  

John and I went to see them with Joan ( thanks to KHS for the comps)  the next night and it was great to hear her for the first time.  Without Joan albums I would have never learned Wildwood Flower or East Virginia.  She has great taste in music to have these guys backing her up.

Thanks to Dean and Erik for a great show and I hope they  visit again soon.

All for now

Hazel